AMP 2016.1.0 Release Overview

System Overview

The Accessibility Management Platform (AMP) provides the infrastructure to facilitate all aspects of a successful accessibility compliance program. AMP’s powerful testing engine and work flow, reporting support, accessible development best practices, and extensive training course library allow organizations to quickly and efficiently incorporate accessibility compliance into existing development processes. This ensures that organizations have the infrastructure to rapidly conform to Section 508, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and other leading accessibility requirements.

Auditing and Testing

Auditing is often the most critical aspect of an accessibility program. A successful audit identifies and prioritizes all accessibility problems, defines a method for addressing those issues, and documents a system's overall compliance.

AMP provides the ability to perform all ranges of accessibility testing from full, formal audits to informal, page level validation of accessibility issues across a variety of accessibility standards and technologies. Based on SSB’s proven Unified Audit Methodology, AMP’s testing support extends from the ability to perform in-browser, quick page tests to scanning complete, enterprise-level websites. Core testing capabilities in AMP include:

Ability to perform manual reviews of source code and high-level page features directly in the browser via the AMP Toolbar testing environments

Integrated reporting between all AMP clients and the central AMP server

Direct access to the AMP testing Application Programming Interface (API) to allow for programmatic integration of testing into any enterprise work flow via web service or code level integration

Central management and deployment of all test definitions and Best Practice content ensuring all auditing end points execute a standard set of testing requirements

Full support for functional testing requirements (§1194.31), including the creation and sharing of use case scripts, assignment of testing in assistive technologies to individual testers and unified reporting for functional and technical validation requirements

Alchemy

Alchemy Transforms Accessibility Testing and Repair

Alchemy supports enhanced JavaScript-based analysis, testing, repair and automatic-fix propagating for web sites. Developers and testers using the Alchemy interface can more rapidly identify accessibility violations within a site and initiate the recommended corrective actions, saving time and cost to repair.

Key Benefits

Decreases time and cost of testing and development

Automatically cascades repairs

Rapidly identifies violations and provides resolutions

Integrates testing in the development process

Reduces operational risks caused by inaccessibility

Shrinks time to achieve high accessibility compliance

Supports accessibility-development training

AMP for Mobile

In partnership with IBM, SSB BART Group (SSB) is proud to offer AMP for Mobile. AMP for Mobile empowers organizations to automate the testing of native mobile applications in order to ensure accessibility compliance of mobile properties. This process will be seamlessly integrated within SSB’s industry-leading Accessibility Management Platform, which will allow the automated testing of mobile content to be managed in the same platform used to manage all aspects of an organization’s accessibility initiative.

AMP for Mobile supports iOS (AMP for iOS) and Android (AMP for Android) native applications as well as mobile web content as rendered on the device itself. Each platform has a complete library of automated and manual accessibility Best Practices updated and maintained by SSB BART Group on a continuous basis. AMP for Mobile allows testing to be performed directly on the mobile device. This means that the automated testing of mobile applications can be run from smartphones and tablets. This ensures the optimum level of accuracy during the testing process since simple source code analysis only covers a fraction of potential issues.

AMP for Mobile is available to AMP Enterprise Licensed organization for an additional subscription fee. For those organizations that are interested in the AMP for Mobile Early Adopter Program please reach out to your account manager or sales@ssbbartgroup.com for additional information.

Full Regulatory Coverage

AMP provides for coverage for the technical, functional, information, documentation and support, and recordkeeping requirements of accessibility standards and regulations. This is in contrast to accessibility tools that provide only support for the subset of requirements that are readily testable in an automated fashion. This ensures that AMP users are able to test for their full regulatory requirements, not only those that can be tested in an automated fashion.

Toolbox

The AMP toolbox provides a single source for testers to access tools that are available as part of their AMP license. The toolbox is updated often to include solutions that provide additional support in specific areas in regard to accessibility testing.

The toolbox includes Alchemy, AMP for Mobile, AMP Toolbars, and other tools such as the Color Contrast Checker. The Color Contrast Checker provides a quick and easy method for testing color combinations for validity under leading accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 requirements.

Reporting

Enterprise level accessibility initiatives demand comprehensive reports that are tailored to specific roles within an organization. AMP supports this requirement by providing detailed reports across a number of parameters, including views of standards-based compliance levels, best practices for identified violations, affected modules, and violation prioritization. These reports allow organizations to document current accessibility status and compliance rates, and create a prioritized project plan for addressing issues. Along with high level report data and compliance scores, AMP reports include:

Compliance Level Reporting, which provides compliance officers, product managers, web masters, and other project stakeholders with high-level standards conformance information. Information at this level can be used to easily identify key areas that lack conformance to relevant public standards. This information can then be used to help drive educational efforts within an organization.

Page Level Diagnostic Reporting, which provides support for detailed page-by-page reporting of violations that have been detected during the testing process. Descriptions and notes pertaining to a violation can be edited and customized at an analyst’s discretion to clearly define the issues that must be addressed for compliance. AMP also provides guidance on how to fix violations in-line with the diagnostic information. This guidance significantly decreases the time, budget, and resources allocated towards remediation efforts.

Intelligent Violation Modeling, which provides different views of the overall list of accessibility issues identified within a report. Users can view overall violation summary information, violations by standard, and violations by priority. This information is extremely valuable when estimating and evaluating required remediation efforts.

Report Distribution and Access Control

AMP provides significant controls on who can access reports and how the report information can be distributed. AMP reports can be easily distributed to an unlimited number of users within an organization and to duly authorized third-parties via e-mail. Viewers are provided access to the report via a streamlined, simplified AMP interface that quickly routes them to the needed information in the system.

Administrators can create flexible report groupings through the use of projects, specific report access lists, and by designating specific, individually authorized users. This framework provides for the easy management of the relationship between report viewers and testing teams while allowing administrators to have precise control over who has access to reports.

Multiple Technology Platform Reports

AMP allows users to generate one report which contains both Web and PDF testing results. This streamlines access to the testing results of web content as well as PDF content into one concise AMP report. These consolidated reports will be treated as single report within AMP projects while offering customizable dashboard views for both Web and PDF testing results providing one report for the testing results and compliance scores of an entire web property such as a website.

Dashboard Reporting

AMP provides all users with a configurable and customizable widget-driven dashboard. This dashboard allows users to have quick and easy access to AMP's most commonly used features and functionality. Additionally, customizable widgets allow users to quickly retrieve the reports, best practices, and projects that they access most frequently.

Centralized Standards Management

All testing controls, standard definitions, and Best Practices are centrally configured and automatically deployed across an organization. This ensures that all compliance efforts are taken using the same single set of requirements and eliminates differentiating interpretations of compliance, a common problem in accessibility. Central Standards Management benefits internal, contractor, and vendor organizations, and requires all parties to test and report on the same standards. As new standards and platforms are added to AMP by SSB BART Group, the Centralized Standards Management allows them to be quickly and easily incorporated, with no disruption to an organization’s compliance activities.

Best Practice Database

AMP contains over 1,500 accessibility best practices that are organized by technology platform and provided as part of the Best Practices section in AMP. AMP users can browse through high-level best practices and drill down as needed to review specific issues. The Best Practices Library provides access to descriptions of accessible development best practices from all of the platforms and across all standards currently supported in AMP. Each best practice guarantees access to:

Description of accessibility issues

Compliant source code example

Non-compliant source code example

Recommended approach and options for fixing a violation of the best practice

Unit tests allowing for validation of the issue in a variety of fashions, including automatic, manual, and assistive technology review

Links to relevant public standards associated with the best practice

Severity, Noticeability, and Tractability (SNT) metrics for prioritizing compliance violations across best practices

Supported Standards and Technology Platforms

AMP provides coverage for formal and informal testing, knowledge management, and training across a variety of development and authoring platforms. This ensures that whatever platform a system is developed on, it can be tested and remediated for accessibility using AMP.

Public accessibility standards change over time because of court decisions, legislation, regulation changes, and technological advances. AMP provides users with automatic management of their accessibility development and testing standards across a broad range of technology platforms. Access to AMP includes no-cost access to the most up-to-date information about standards. This includes detailed implementation specifications for all common standards, step-by-step formal and informal testing guidance, and detailed training courses across a variety of key development and authoring platforms. This ensures that whatever platform a system is developed on, it can be tested and brought into compliance using AMP.

Supported Standards

Supported Platforms

Section 508

§1194.21

§1194.22

§1194.23

§1194.24

§1194.25

§1194.26

§1194.31

§1194.41

WCAG 1.0

WCAG 2.0

VHA Section 508 Checklist

§1194.21

§1194.22

§1194.31

ADA Requirements

Japanese Industrial Standard

KWCAG

NFB Certification Requirements

Section 255

CVAA

M 376

Web

HTML

XHTML

XML

JavaScript

AJAX

ARIA

CSS

Streaming Audio and Video

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flex

Adobe LiveCycle

iOS

Android

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Silverlight

Adobe Captivate

Macintosh Software

Windows Native Software (WPF, MFC)

Java Software

Physical Hardware

Telecommunications Software and Hardware

eLearning via SSB University

AMP seamlessly integrates with SSB University to deliver an easy way to obtain all of the pre-recorded trainings included with an AMP license. In addition, users will also be able to access courses that were purchased in SSB University in the same streamlined experience.

AMP provides all users with access to a significant number of training courses covering a variety of key topics in accessibility. These training courses are provided in a web-based, self-paced format that allows learners to access and complete courses individually, without instructors. Training courses are coupled with certification testing. These tests allow users to demonstrate a level of knowledge in a topic area, and provide a method for organizations to demonstrate best efforts at educating personnel on compliance requirements. These training modules work in both Mac and PC, can be used by learners either with or without audio, and are SCORM-conformant.

AMP Product Support

Technical support is included with an AMP license. In addition AMP users also have access to the AMP Product Support site included with their license. The AMP Product Support site is a a product support portal which provides rapid access to help documentation, frequently asked questions and our AMP Technical Support Team.

AMP users can leverage support link in the AMP header to obtain answers to their AMP related questions faster than ever. Since the AMP Product Support site is directly integrated with AMP users simply use their AMP credentials for access.